Plans for new home refused due to site potentially housing Anglo-Saxon remains

The site of the proposed house sits between the A179 and the road leading to The Fens (Image: Google)

Councillors have refused plans for a new home after hearing the land could be of "national and international importance" due to potentially housing Anglo-Saxon remains.

Hartlepool Borough Council Planning Committee on Wednesday (December 15) refused proposals for a single house to be built on land at the Fens in Hart village.

The proposals, submitted by Mr R Greig, had been recommended for refusal, with council planning officers raising several concerns such as that it could cause "substantial harm" and a loss of archaeology to the area.

At the meeting, Robin Daniels, from Tees Archaeology, outlined how neighbouring land, which the Manor Park development has been built on, has shown to be home to an Anglo-Saxon cemetery with "something like 350" human remains.

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Harald Hardrada: why there’s more to the last great Viking than his death in 1066

King Harald Sigurdsson of Norway – remembered by the name Hardrada, meaning ‘hard ruler’ – was a complex, fierce and ultimately doomed antihero. If the myriad ancient sagas and tales of him bear any truth, he was one of the great Vikings worthy of epic television series such as Game of Thrones or Vikings. An outcast son of a petty king, he rose to win a fortune, romance an empress, marry a princess, and carve himself a kingdom by the strength of his sword arm.

Harald made his first mark in history as a 15-year-old warrior, when he fought alongside his elder half-brother King Olaf II (later Saint Olaf) against Danes loyal to Cnut the Great in the battle of Stiklestad in 1030. The day ended with defeat, and for Olaf, death.

According to the Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson, the fighting took place in part under a total eclipse of the Sun; a night fight in the middle of the day. Pagans may have believed the hole in the sky was the one-eyed god Odin watching over the battle and choosing the slain for Valhalla, while Christians may have recalled the midday darkness at the Crucifixion, a thousand years past. Eclipses have customarily been regarded as a bad omen throughout history, and here it would have been no different. Not only was Olaf slain, but Harald barely got away from the battle with his life.

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The St Brice’s Day Massacre: what really happened?

The 11th century in English history features its fair share of bloodshed in battles, but right at the start of the new millennium, there is one event that has always seemed to stand out for its violence: the St Brice’s Day Massacre of 13 November 1002.

“It continues to exercise a curious allure over successive generations of undergraduate essay-writers and their lecturers, whose own occasionally lurid interest follows a historiographical tradition going back almost a millennium, beginning with the Norman observers who sought to depict the event as one of the great, gory English national sins justifying the conquest of 1066.”

That’s a quote from Dr Benjamin Savill, of Trinity College, Dublin, in his article Remembering St Brictius: Conspiracy, Violence and Liturgical Time in the Danish Massacre of 1002, published in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History.

The massacre is a striking incident, but one for which we have only limited evidence (in common with most of the events of the period). There is a reference to it in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which notes that “in this year the king ordered to be slain all the Danish men who were in England”, and a further more detailed comment in a diploma of King Æthelred (the reigning monarch at the time) for the monastery of St Frideswide, Oxford, of 1004. That diploma describes how the Danes in that city sought sanctuary in a church, which was set upon and burnt down by “all the people in pursuit”.

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Metal detectorist unearths largest Anglo-Saxon treasure hoard ever discovered in England

 A number of gold coins and objects from the Norfolk hoard (Image credit: British Museum) 

A metal detectorist in West Norfolk, England, has unearthed the largest Anglo-Saxon treasure hoard ever discovered: a bounty of 131 coins and four golden objects. Most of the items were found over the course of six years by a single detectorist, who wishes to remain anonymous, according to the British Museum. 

Ten of the coins were dug up by former-police officer David Cockle, also using a metal detector, the Evening Standard reported. However, Cockle kept his discovery secret and then illegally sold the coins for 15,000 British pounds (about $20,000), according to BBC News. When the authorities discovered his theft in 2017, he was charged with converting criminal property and sentenced to 16 months in prison for "pure greed," presiding Judge Rupert Overbury said at the sentencing. Cockle was also dismissed from the police force. Of the 10 coins he sold, eight have been recovered.

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First finished pieces of Sutton Hoo replica ship joined together

The first two finished pieces of an 88ft-long replica of the Sutton Hoo longship have been joined together.

Archaeologist Angela Care Evans, who worked on a dig at Sutton Hoo in the 1960s while working as a research assistant for the British Museum, knocked in the first of three wooden pegs to join the keel to an extension piece.

The full-size reconstruction of the Saxon ship that was excavated in 1939 is being built in a shed beside the River Deben in Woodbridge, Suffolk.

It is to be made of oak donated by Suffolk farmers and secured with iron rivets.

Dating from the early 7th century, the original Sutton Hoo longship has been described as a ghost ship, as its timber had rotted away in the acidic soil, leaving only an imprint in the sand.

The project’s master shipwright, Tim Kirk, said: “Through building this, and it is really just a big experimental archaeology programme, we’re hoping to learn how the ship actually sailed.

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Viking Hygiene, Clothing, & Jewelry

 

Viking clothing was made of wool, linen, and animal hides, and for the wealthy, silk. Combs – which it seemed almost every Viking carried – were carved from antler, bone, ivory, and wood and often kept in their own cases. Jewelry of the upper class was fashioned from silver, gold, gemstones, and polished glass, but the lower class adorned themselves within their limits as well, using tin, lead, iron, and possibly copper. Shoes and boots were made of animal hide and without heels. Except for slaves, generally speaking, Scandinavians were well-dressed and took great pride in their personal appearance. They began each morning with a personal hygiene regimen, and Saturday was set aside for bathing and washing clothes; a practice the Anglo-Saxon chroniclers found both strange and objectionable.

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‘Prickles down the neck’: project reveals unsung female heroes of Sutton Hoo dig

 

The trust believes the resulting images are among the earliest surviving colour photographs of any major archaeological dig. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Barbara Wagstaff and Mercie Lack’s photographs of 1939 excavation left in plastic bag at National Trust

It was 12 years ago that conservator Anita Bools first laid eyes on photographs which had been left in a plastic bag at the reception of the National Trust site Sutton Hoo by a mystery donor.

She remembered they were laid out on tables for her to see and decide how important they might be. “It was one of those moments you get prickles down the back of your neck. I thought ‘my goodness … this is the genuine thing’. It almost felt like the archaeological discovery itself.”

The hundreds of images in meticulously prepared albums were from August 1939. In fascinating detail they captured the excitement of one of the most extraordinary archaeological digs in British history.

On Wednesday, the trust announced it had completed a project conserving, digitising and making the photographs taken by Barbara Wagstaff and Mercie Lack, two schoolteachers and friends with a passion for photography and archaeology, publicly available.

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Anglo-Saxon Sword Pyramid Found in England

(Norfolk County Council/Portable Antiquities Scheme)

NORFOLK, ENGLAND—According to a BBC News report, a metal detectorist in the the Breckland area of Norfolk in eastern England has found a so-called sword pyramid dating to between A.D. 560 and 630, a time when the area was part of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia. The object, which would have been part of a pair and whose fellow has not been found, was designed as a decorative fitting to keep a sword attached to its scabbard. Researchers have speculated that one of the sword pyramid's functions was to delay hasty unsheathing of a warrior's sword in anger.

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Deposed Ninth-Century King May Have Called This Cave Dwelling Home

Researchers previously thought the cave was an 18th-century folly, or decorative structure
constructed to enhance the natural landscape.
(Mark Horton / Edmund Simons / Royal Agricultural University)

An early medieval cave structure in Derbyshire, England, may be the former home of a ninth-century king—and the United Kingdom’s oldest intact domestic interior.

As Mark Brown reports for the Guardian, new research conducted by experts from the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) and Wessex Archaeology suggests the 1,200-year-old dwelling once housed Eardwulf, an exiled ruler of the medieval English kingdom Northumbria. The team published its analysis in the Proceedings of the University of Bristol Speleological Society.

“Our findings demonstrate that this odd little rock-cut building in Derbyshire is more likely from the 9th century than from the 18th century as everyone had originally thought,” says lead author Edmund Simons, a research fellow at RAU, in a statement. “This makes it probably the oldest intact domestic interior in the U.K.—with doors, floor, roof, windows etc.—and, what’s more, it may well have been lived in by a king who became a saint!”

Per the statement, researchers previously believed the cave was an 18th-century folly (a type of decorative building constructed to enhance the natural landscape). Though the structure is classified by Historic England as a “[n]atural cave, enlarged and formed into a folly,” Simons tells the Guardian that he “can’t think of a natural process that makes walls, doors and windows, let alone pillars.”

The sandstone-chiseled building features narrow openings characteristic of Saxon architecture, notes BBC News. A nearby ninth-century crypt boasts a comparable rock-cut pillar, perhaps suggesting that the two buildings date to the same period.

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Exiled Medieval Anglo-Saxon King May Have Lived as Hermit in 9th-Century Cave Dwelling

Anchor Church cave may have belonged to a 9th-century king turned saint.

COURTESY ROYAL AGRICULATURAL UNIVERSITY

Archaeologists have identified an Anglo-Saxon cave house that may have belonged to a 9th-century king of Northumbria named Eardwulf. The discovery was made by the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) and Wessex Archaeology, which recently published their findings in the Proceedings of the University of Bristol Speleological Society.

The series of sandstone caves in Derbyshire, central England, were once believed to be follies—a popular 18th-century trend that involved elaborate structures with no real purpose, built mainly for decoration. New evidence, however, shows they were likely constructed or enlarged in the 9th century, after erosion from the River Trent had created natural caves at the site.

Anglo-Saxon architecture is featured throughout the rock-cut dwelling, with narrow arched windows and doors, as well as a pillar that resembles the nearby Repton crypt from the same period. “Using detailed measurements, a drone survey, and a study of architectural details, it was possible to reconstruct the original plan of three rooms and easterly facing oratory, or chapel, with three apses,” Edmund Simons, principal investigator of the project and research fellow at RAU, said in a statement.

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Cerne Abbas Giant may have been carved into hill over 1000 years ago

The Cerne Abbas Giant

National Trust Images/Mike Calnan/James Dobson

A mysterious chalk carving of a huge, naked man on an English hillside was made in the 10th century, according to the first attempt to archaeologically date the giant. The finding is unexpected because the earliest mentions of the Cerne Abbas Giant are from just over 300 years ago, suggesting it was forgotten for centuries.

Historians and archaeologists had many ideas about when the giant was constructed, says team member Mike Allen, an independent geoarchaeologist at Allen Environmental Archaeology in Codford, UK. “Everyone was wrong.”

The giant is carved into a hillside overlooking the village of Cerne Abbas in southern England. It is a figure of a man with a large, erect penis, holding a club. It was made by digging trenches into the hillside, then filling them with white chalk.

The earliest known reference to the giant is from 1694, from the records of the church in Cerne Abbas. The giant is absent from earlier records, notably a 1617 survey of the area by John Norden, who was famously thorough,

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Cerne Abbas Giant: Why the Anglo-Saxons created England’s most macho hillside chalk figure

The giant, carved in solid lines from the chalk bedrock, measures in at 55 metres high, and carries a huge knobbled club, which measures 37 metres in length

(Getty/iStock)

Scientists have begun to solve one of Britain’s greatest archaeological mysteries – the age of one of the UK’s largest and most enigmatic artworks.

Until now archaeologists and historians had thought that a 55-metre tall figure, cut into a hillside in Dorset, the so-called Cerne Abbas Giant, was prehistoric or Roman – or that, alternatively, it had been created in the 17th century,

But new dating tests, organised by the National Trust, suggest that the giant hails from none of those periods and was instead constructed by the Anglo-Saxons.

The tests indicate that the massive hill figure was either fully or substantially created at some stage between the mid-7th century and the 13th century. The new dating evidence has potential implications for understanding some of England’s other surviving and lost giant chalk figures.

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Long read | The man at Sutton Hoo

Note: This long read was written in 2015. Professor Campbell died in 2016 and his article is published posthumously with full permission and in cooperation with his estate

In 1926 a Colonel and Mrs Pretty bought a big modern house in Suffolk. It stood near Woodbridge on a 100ft bluff, beside the river Deben, with a wide view over the town. A feature of the estate was a group of some (as then appeared) dozen mounds. Mrs Pretty was interested in the possibility of their being burial mounds, and reinforced this plausible supposition by psychic inquiry. In 1938 – by then a widow – she sought the advice of the curator of the Ipswich museum. He put her on to someone who did part-time archaeological work for them, a Mr Basil Brown. Learning owes a lot to Mr Brown. Nowadays there are not so many people like him: with not much of formal education, self-taught, very able, a natural archaeologist. His humble status shows in the terms on which Mrs Pretty employed him: 30 shillings weekly, sleeping accommodation in her chauffeur’s house, the assistance of two labourers. In 1938 Brown set carefully to work on three of the mounds. All three had previously been robbed and damaged. But what he found was interesting indeed: not least the remains of a ship 65 feet long, human and horse remains, and strange things, for example part of a Byzantine plaque of a ‘winged victory’. In 1939 Brown began to dig up the most conspicuous mound. He most carefully felt his way into the discovery of the remains of a ship, a big one, some 90 feet long. Midships were the remains of what he rightly took to be a burial chamber. The great importance of his discoveries became known. In July more professional, academic, archaeologists took over. When the excavation concluded, a week before the Second World War broke out, an astounding burial deposit had been unearthed.

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The Dig: Archive shows real-life archaeologist from Netflix film

Archive footage from a 1965 BBC documentary shows the real-life archaeologist who discovered Anglo-Saxon treasures at Sutton Hoo.

Basil Brown found the ship burial in Suffolk in 1939 and the event has been turned into Netflix film The Dig starring Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes.

Speaking about the moment he made the discovery, Mr Brown said: "I carefully followed it down with bare hands and a trowel, thinking it was a small boat because you wouldn't expected a ship 80 feet long."

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The Dig: Pandemic delays Woodbridge Sutton Hoo replica ship build

The Sutton Hoo Ship's Company wants to build a lifesize replica of the
1,400-year-old Anglo-Saxon ship 

The Sutton Hoo Ship's Company 

Volunteers hoping to create a replica of the Anglo-Saxon ship found at Sutton Hoo have had their schedule put back because of the pandemic.

The story of the ship's discovery in 1939 near Woodbridge, Suffolk, is explored in the hit Netflix film The Dig.

Two oak trees intended for the keel were delivered to the Sutton Hoo Ship's Company in January.

It had hoped to launch the seaworthy 90ft (27m) replica next year. 

Archaeologists, historians, shipbuilders and volunteers are behind the Sutton Hoo Ship's Company. In 2019 they launched a £1m campaign to fund a replica of the 1,400-year old ship. 

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Inside 'The Dig': how the star-studded film squares with reality of Sutton Hoo

Ralph Fiennes as Basil Brown in The Dig. © Netflix 2021

This month sees the release of The Dig, a star-studded Netflix film about the discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial in 1939. The grave, made in Suffolk in the early seventh century, centred on a 27-metre-long ship beneath a three-metre-high mound. Inside was a vast assemblage of exquisite objects from an incredible geographical range, spanning Britain, Europe, the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and South Asia. Nothing like this had ever been encountered before and it transformed our understanding of England’s early medieval past.

Despite their glitzy appeal, The Dig (based on John Preston’s 2007 book) largely eschews these objects to focus upon the discovery itself and the individuals involved: landowner Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan), Suffolk archaeologist Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes), Cambridge academic Charles W Phillips (Ken Stott), and his team, including Peggy Piggott (Lily James), who found the first piece of gold inside. The story of the excavation, overshadowed by impending war, is just as dramatic as the archaeology it uncovered and I am thrilled that The Dig will bring it to a wider audience.

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Cambridge Anglo-Saxon graveyard found under King's College halls

Archelogists uncovered the graves after the 1930s halls were demolished

KING'S COLLEGE/DRONESCAPES

An Anglo-Saxon graveyard with "huge potential" has been unearthed beneath former university student housing.

King's College, Cambridge discovered the extensive cemetery, containing more than 60 graves, after demolishing a group of 1930s buildings.

Evidence of Iron Age structures and Roman earthworks was also identified.

Dr Sam Lucy, from the University of Cambridge, said the discovery of graves spanning different periods was "very unusual and really interesting".

Since the 19th century, archaeologists have believed there was an early Medieval/Anglo-Saxon cemetery in west Cambridge.

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'Find of the century': medieval hoard of treasures unearthed in Cambridge

The human remains found at the Cambridge site are remarkably well preserved in the alkaline soil. Photograph: Albion Archaeology 

Graves found under demolished student halls are providing valuable insight into life in a post-Roman settlement

An early medieval graveyard unearthed beneath student accommodation at Cambridge University has been described as “one of the most exciting finds of Anglo-Saxon archaeology since the 19th century”.

King’s College discovered the “extensive” cemetery, containing more than 60 graves, after demolishing a group of 1930s buildings which had recently housed graduates and staff in the west of the city, to make way for more modern halls.

Around 200 items in the graves, including bronze brooches, bead necklaces, swords, short blades, pottery and glass flasks, have been systematically uncovered. Most date from the early Anglo-Saxon period (c400-650 CE), although evidence of iron age structures and Roman earthworks has also been found.

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Rare Scraps of Mineralized Anglo-Saxon Textiles Found in England

A fragment of 1,500-year-old cloth is still attached to a metal brooch found at the site.

 (Courtesy of the Museum of London Archaeology)

Last year, two companies developing land near the small village of Overstone in Northamptonshire, England, discovered a pair of subterranean surprises: a trove of 1,500 year-old Anglo-Saxon treasures and remnants of 4,000-year-old Bronze-Age burials and structures.

Barratt and David Wilson Homes had hired archaeologists from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) to excavate the area ahead of construction. The researchers announced their finds earlier this month following an extensive, year-long dig.

Altogether, reports Carly Odell for the Northamptom Chronicle & Echo, the 15-hectare (37-acre) tract of land boasts a rich deposit of artifacts that spans thousands of years. The Anglo-Saxon cemetery is likely the largest of its kind ever discovered in the East Midlands county.

Per the statement, the team unearthed two Anglo-Saxon sites side-by-side: a cemetery with 154 burials and the remains of a settlement made up of 22 structures. (Another 20 Anglo-Saxon buildings were scattered across the area.) Researchers extracted more than 3,000 objects total, from jewelry, including 50 brooches, 15 rings and 2,000 beads, to weapons, such as 40 knives, 25 spears and 15 shield bosses, or conical pieces placed at the center of shields. Other finds included combs carved out of bone and cosmetic kits.

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Astonishing Anglo-Saxon artefact!

This rare and exciting fragment of Anglo-Saxon sculpture was found on an archaeological excavation at Mark Rake, Bromborough, Wirral in late 2016! The carved sandstone fragment is part of a slab carved between 900 and 1100 AD, and is decorated with incised lines marking out a border around what is probably a cross.

The site where it was found lies in the middle of Bromborough village, just to the north of the parish church which is dedicated to St Barnabas, and until recently the plot of land formed part of the Rectory gardens. The site came to the attention of Museum of Liverpool’s archaeologists when a planning application was made to build houses on the site after it was sold by the church.

Little is known of the origins of villages on the Wirral, but there are hints that many of them have been occupied since at least the Roman period and possibly longer; earlier excavations at Thorstone Drive, Irby and Hilary Breck, Wallasey, had found evidence for Prehistoric, Roman and early medieval buildings and other features and Mark Rake’s location, immediately next door to a church mentioned in the Domesday Survey, suggested that it had the potential for similar finds.

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Significant Anglo-Saxon Cemetery And Settlement Found In Overstone, Northamptonshire

Aerial view of the excavation at Overstone [Credit: MOLA]

A team from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) have excavated the largest Anglo-Saxon cemetery in Northamptonshire at Overstone Gate. Excavations were conducted over the course of 12 months, in preparation for the construction of a housing development.

154 Anglo-Saxon burials were found, containing beautiful grave goods totalling nearly 3000 objects. These included jewellery (roughly 150 brooches, 15 rings, 2000 beads, 75 wrist clasps and 15 chatelaines), weapons (roughly 25 spears, 40 knives and 15 shield bosses), and everyday objects such as cosmetic kits and bone combs. Pieces of textile, which rarely survive in the archaeological record, were found preserved next to metal objects which had caused them to mineralise. All of the finds have now been removed from site for analysis by our specialists.

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New Insights From Original Domesday Survey Revealed

 

A new interpretation of the survey behind Domesday Book—the record of conquered England compiled on the orders of William the Conqueror in 1086—has emerged from a major new study of the survey's earliest surviving manuscript.

Research published in the English Historical Review shows historians now believe Domesday was more efficient, complex, and sophisticated than previously thought. The survey's first draft, which covered England south of the River Tees, was made with astonishing speed—within 100 days.

It was then checked and reorganised in three further stages, resulting in the production of new documents, each carefully designed for specific fiscal and political purposes. The iconic Domesday Book was simply one of several outputs from the process.

Lead researcher, Dr. Stephen Baxter, Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oxford, said: "Domesday Book is at once one of medieval England's best known and most enigmatic documents. The reasons for—and processes behind—its creation have been the subject of debate among historians for centuries. This new research, based on the earliest surviving Domesday manuscript, shows the survey was compiled remarkably quickly and then used like a modern database, where data is entered in one format and can be extracted in other formats for specific purposes."

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Grave goods including weapons found at large Anglo-Saxon cemetery uncovered in Northamptonshire

 

Archaeologists uncovered the site during pre-construction planning requirements.

More than 150 burials were found and many contained grave goods including weapons, beads and brooches

A burial site that could be up to 4,000 years old has been found on housing development land in Northamptonshire.

Archaeologists have called the site in Overstone ‘by far the biggest’ Anglo-Saxon cemetery ever found in the county.

The site was excavated as part of pre-construction planning requirements at Overstone Farm where Barratt and David Wilson homes intend to build two to five bedroom homes, a school and amenities, as part of a new housing development.

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